Book of Gal

BOOK OF GAL 1999 Digital prints. LED signboards

“The Book of Gal” are paperback pulp fiction lives of gals turned into B movies and sold as cheap videos. The Book of Gal plays with ways women have been represented and sensationalized in popular media while referencing “serious” historical male religious texts. This set includes the Penitent Magdalene series, the Rogue Wave Trilogy and other independent titles. This is an ongoing project that draws from the culture of “gals.”

The Book of Gal “Rogue Wave Trilogy” is a sequence of dream-like images and narratives in which gals Lucky Chance, Gidget and Silver succumb to the power of nature and the inevitable.

“Two Thousand One A.D.” satirizes the fetishist nature of product and packaging. After 9/11 “Attack on America”, “America on Alert”, “Dead or Alive” gave a B movie quality to complex political issues. “One Million Years B.C.” starring Raquel Welch in her fur and leather cave girl bikini is a classic sexploitative image that Hollywood has been peddling for decades.

“The Penitent Magdalene” series plays with ways women have been sensationalized in popular media while referencing classic religious texts. Madgalene has been the icon of sin and redemption through the ages mirroring the attitudes towards women, representing their sexuality and spirituality in male dominated cultural contexts. Each era projected their fears and fantasies about women’s sexuality easily interpreted in the art of the times. From the “First Apostle” depiction’s of Magdalene at the tomb of Christ to the “Penitent Magdalene”, the often semi to fully naked repentant whore, she both titillated and saved the true believer and art collector. The “First Apostle” now sells us cleaning products to purge our souls of mildew and bacteria. These Penitent Magdalenes walk on spa water, emerge from refrigerators, enjoy a change of hair color and commit retail therapy daily.